Cynthia Nixon

Cynthia Ellen Nixon (born April 9, 1966) is an American actress, best known for her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series Sex and the City (1998–2004), the film Sex and the City and its sequel Sex and the City 2. Some of her other work has included starring in the films: The Manhattan Project, Baby's Day Out, Let It Ride, Warm Springs, Little Manhattan, The Babysitters, Rampart, and a recurring role in the television show The Big C. She has received two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, a Grammy Award, and a GLAAD Media Award. --- Nixon was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of Anne Knoll, an actress from Chicago, Illinois, and Walter E. Nixon, a radio journalist from Texas. She graduated from Hunter College High School and attended Barnard College. In the spring of 1986, she studied abroad with Semester at Sea. In 1984, while a freshman at Barnard College, Nixon made theatrical history by simultaneously appearing in two hit Broadway plays directed by Mike Nichols. These were The Real Thing, where Nixon played the daughter of Jeremy Irons and Christine Baranski; and Hurlyburly, where she played a young woman who encounters sleazy Hollywood executives. The two theaters were just two blocks apart and Nixon's roles were both short, so she could run from one to the other. Onscreen, she played the role of Salieri's maid/spy, Lorl, in Amadeus (1984), standing out well amidst a powerhouse cast at just 17 years of age. Nixon's first onscreen appearance was as an imposter on To Tell the Truth, where her mother worked. She began acting at age 12 as the object of a wealthy schoolmate's crush in The Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid, a 1979 ABC Afterschool Special. She made her feature debut co-starring with Kristy McNichol and Tatum O'Neal in Little Darlings (1980). She made her Broadway debut as Dinah Lord in a 1980 revival of The Philadelphia Story. Alternating between film, TV and stage, she did projects like the 1982 ABC-movie My Body, My Child, the features Prince of the City (1981) and I Am the Cheese (1983), and the 1982 Off-Broadway productions of John Guare's Lydie Breeze. In 1985, she appeared alongside Jeff Daniels in Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky at Second Stage Theatre. She landed her first major supporting part in a movie as an intelligent teenager who aids her boyfriend (Christopher Collet) in building a nuclear bomb in Marshall Brickman's The Manhattan Project (1986). Nixon was part of the cast of the NBC miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan (NBC, 1988) starring Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey and portrayed the daughter of a presidential candidate (Michael Murphy) in Tanner '88 (also 1988), Robert Altman's political satire for HBO. She reprised the role for the 2004 sequel Tanner on Tanner. --- From 1988 to 2003, Nixon was in a relationship with teacher and photographer Danny Mozes. They have two children together, a daughter born in 1996 and a son born in 2002. In 2004, Nixon began dating education activist Christine Marinoni. Nixon and Marinoni became engaged in April 2009. Marinoni gave birth to a son in 2011. Nixon and Marinoni were married in New York City on May 27, 2012, with Nixon wearing a custom-made, pale green dress by Carolina Herrera. Regarding her sexual orientation, Nixon remarked in 2007: "I don't really feel I've changed. I'd been with men all my life, and I'd never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn't seem so strange. I'm just a woman in love with another woman." She identified herself as bisexual in 2012. Nixon has taken a public stand supporting marriage equality in Marinoni's home state of Washington, hosting a fund-raising event in support of Washington Referendum 74.